M-ATV new armored vehicle banned by Calvary unit for not being safe enough in eastern Afghanistan

In the western, bomb-laden region of Nangarhar province, the 1-61 Calvary Squadron has banned its soldiers from using M-ATV (Mine-resistant, ambush-protected, all-terrain) vehicles designed specially for Afghan terrain, according to several soldiers and a medical specialist.

After at least four soldiers died in M-ATV's in 2010, the Squadron's Army Explosive Ordinance Demolition specialists, began to study how the M-ATVs performed when struck by heavy IEDs. It was an issue of weight and the flooring that absorbs the blast.

According to the company that manufactures them, Oshkosh Corp. of Oshkosh, Wisconsin, the M-ATV was designed to replace the hulking MRAP mine-resistant vehicles which the Pentagon sent in large numbers to Iraq.  While the MRAPs proved very good at protecting soldiers inside from blasts, so good some claim, an entire crew has never been killed by a blast inside an MRAP, the MRAP was too heavy for the makeshift, often, mountainous roads of Afghanistan.

But the Oshkosh M-ATV weighs about 11 tons, which is only about half as heavy as the average MRAP and there lies the problems in areas seeded with IEDs like Nangarhar or Kandahar Province.  It can't safely handle the same size blast.

It feels like, "trapped in a tin can," one soldier said of riding inside. "The M-ATV is only designed to handle _____ pounds of home-made explosives."

"The Max Pro, a true MRAP, is designed to take _____ pounds of explosive," a sergeant added. "Yes, the M-ATV is better than a Humvee (the ubiquitous four-wheeled armored jeeps most used in the early years of Iraq and Afghanistan).  But there's a reason our Senior Commander banned them here."

The 1-61 Cav soldiers said they've seen their soldiers have suffered more sever injuries from the M-ATV floor rising "up to two feet" on blasts, causing more severe leg and back injuries and launching gunners from the turret.


The Squadron opted to use the heavier MRAPs where they could, and where the roads were too bad, soldiers almost universally feel they have a better chance of surviving a blast on foot, both because they have a lower chance of stepping on an IED than riding over one, and because they feel being thrown from a blast is better than being trapped inside a steel container in one.

(Remains of an M-ATV in Kandahar Oct. 2010, after an IED blast killed the driver and truck commander, and launched the gunner from the top of the vehicle.)

Last fall in Kandahar, I saw an M-ATV absolutely destroyed from a huge IED that had been hidden in a dirt culvert.  The two front passengers were killed and the gunner was launched from the top of the vehicle, much as soldiers in Nangahar described their catastrophic hits on M-ATVs.  The question is, would a more traditional MRAP have given the soldiers a better chance?

Oshkosh received orders valued at $2.3 billion for 4,296 M-ATVs, including spare parts and support services in 2009.  I came across this thread for a M-ATV armor upgrade kit, which may be a tacit acknowledgement that the M-ATV's underside armor is not cutting it, and needs to be beefed up much like the failings of the unarmored Humvees early in the Iraq war.

This information is anecdotal to one squadron's experience and my own, but if Army units are making the decision from their Senior Commander down to their Staff Sergeants because of lives at risk, isn't this the best testament that M-ATV's need to be beefed up or replaced in flatter, IED-heavy areas?